Posts by Andrew eaton

I want oled...

why do people have to go on about film...

It slightly bugs me that someone has to put the film ore in... Film is lovely but for anything with a deadline digital is the only way... how much of the Olympics is being captured on film? I’m guessing none.. When it matters and your rent money depends on getting the shot i know which one i would chose.. when it comes to the cost, you paying for a very solid, very reliable camera with the backup of Nikon at most major events, if it doesn’t pay your rent or you don’t have the spare cash don’t moan… another consideration above where the light lands is the camera performance, the camera metering AF and latency will leave the film camera's far behind. I started life on film with my first pro body being the Canon EOS 1n and I have just added the Canon EOS 1D X and trust me it’s fantastic… where is the review…

The psychoacoustics of the saleman...

I think we shouldn’t under estimate the psychoacoustics effects of having you ego stroked by a salesman wanting to rinse your cash… what makes me laugh the most is only middle age and old people can afford this kit and have most likely have age related hearing loss…

What also make me laugh is if you’re going to spend so much on your system, spend some on your room acoustics.. I use Genelec studio monitors which are in most studios and mastering suites of the world and most music in the production have been though… no HIFI hype/bullshit

An intresting move

I have been using canon full frame for a long time now since the EOS1DS and have added the MK II and MK III to my collection.

each revision has given me lower noise, higher rez and better screens and a few added problems

The higher rez has given me greater detail to work with in editing and greater sharpness in large prints, but it magnifies handshake and lens imperfections. i have found with my MK III if i am not using my lenses at their sweet spot (aperture and distance to subject) they can look a bit fishy.. this is only have canon L series lenses. i always thought the ever increasing rez was a ploy to get us to buy new lenses... lol I also work with a phaseone IQ180 which at 80mpix pins you in a corner with shutter speed/available light, handshake and big files to work with. But this is the fun of the job.. :-)

I’ve always thought the frame rate is irrelevant for me and seen the odd "photographer" use it to do photography by numbers... (once i was asked by one photographer "how many photo's do you take a year, i took 150,000 last year"...lol) so i find the merge of the D and DS range a slightly odd as editorial/fashion/advertisement photographers’ don’t need frame rate and sports/photojournalists don’t need full frame or high rez...

The high ISO range is a bonus, but I have often found good spot metering and a f1.2 lens has negated the need. I have repeatedly seen high ISO used where the photographer can’t meter properly or they are using a cheap lens.

I have been waiting for the DSmk IV for a long time thinking it would be a bit better for my needs but now the X has come out i am not sure weather to add the X to my collection and retire my MKII. It has now done 60k shots but with only a gain of 2 mpix the only thing which would be nice is the HD video. Will be interesting to have a close look at the results from the new sensor and I’m sure CPS will be inviting me for a demo (I didn’t make it to Pro Solutions for the launch) however at this point I’m not feeling the £5k is worth spending…

Leica Fanboy

I would have a good look at the competition if i was you, there are a numbere of MF digital systems out there including Leaf, Pentax, Hasslblad, Phase one all with there pro's and cons.

I have a Phaseone p65+ on a 645. The major advantage of Phaseone is it’s an open system allowing you put you back on many other cameras or if you have a Phaseone 645 you can put many manufactures Medium format lenses on it. So if you’re going to spend this kind of cash why lock yourself into such a closed when you can buy a back that can go on many different cameras? One cool thing to play with is Capture One Pro 6 which is great tethering software and gives you real time reviewing of you captured images on your Ipad ;-)

One other note of caution is Leica’s inability to manage the supply chain and you may end up waiting a very very very very very very long time for your lens to turn up!!!

a fluffy problem...

i think there is always a groce simplification of this problem, firstly there is the line speed, if you are on VM this is not a problem as the coax cable to the local cab is good for speeds upto 50Mbit but this is only to the cab. With BT your speed is dependent on your distance and quality of the cables and your internal wiring and how old the DSLAM you are connecting to. Some adsl routers like Cisco you can see this speed.

These line speeds are the tip of the ice berg and the fight for speed starts. with VM the first contention is on the local distribution cab(the bigger ones with fans whirring away) and how many users on that cab and what speed they have signed up for.. the fight here is for the connection to the local POP. The next fight is from the POP to London and how maxed out that feed is. once in London it depends where you are going..

With BT (non unbundled, IP Stream) your first contention is in the exchange from the DSLAM's to the ATM network this is a gray aria. The next big bottle neck is the central pipe. These are very very expensive, last time I looked on the BT price list a 155Mb feed cost £300K a year + £4 per user per month (you do the numbers). This pricing plan makes the economics of adsl pile as many users on this pipe... so getting light users that suff the net once a week is ideal. isp's with multiple pipes can shift users around putting all of the file sharer's on a slow pipe managing the problem. With the advent of Iplayer etc everyone becomes heavy users.

Unbundled service are very dependent on the network they put in. I know this is regionally dependent if the only connectivity supplier is BT there are economic realities.

There is one other thing which no mater how fast your connection is the latency to you destination will case tcp windowing problems

my final comment is virgin's fibre optic advert drives me nuts... i have a 10GB network which is 500x faster... grrrr